


Dark Retrospect, part 3: "This is Who I am; Right Here, Right Now."

by jer832



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Humor, Comfort/Angst, Existential Angst, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Humor, Male Friendship, Male-Female Friendship, Other, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-21
Updated: 2014-01-21
Packaged: 2018-01-08 18:45:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1136128
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jer832/pseuds/jer832
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The final book in DARK RETROSPECT. Stripped of all pretence and preconceptions, the Doctor and Rose Tyler finally face each other and all the consequences of the <i>fantaisie sinistre</i>.  And as for Jack Harkness - How you defend yourself when the people you love enough to die for kick you when you're down:  you get yourself up and get far away. </p><p>The title is from Nine's dialog in Russell T. Davies' "The End of the World".</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. "Consequences"

**Author's Note:**

> I can't thank emraldeyedauter, scifiangel and beachy_geek enough for their assistance, support, and the wonderful discussions that led me to delve deeper into the characters' psyches. They made sure that throughout DARK RETROSPECT my characterizations of Jack and Rose were honest as well as true to those DW characters, that my story and the characters' backstories were consistent with _Doctor Who_ , and most importantly that the Doctor remained honest and true to himself - any one of him and all of him.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Jack had told him to look at what he had. For once the Doctor listened to someone other than himself, and he looked; and he saw Rose; he saw that Rose wanted him, maybe as much as he wanted her._

 

 

 

" 

* * *

  
When Rose opened her door, the Doctor was standing there. Her heart stopped beating for a moment. Then it couldn’t stop racing. His lanky body had the same beauty as always–undeniably male with a compelling strong sensuality that was subtly not human. But now he appeared more… massive? No. More masculine? No, and not any more alien, or any less. More... ? That was it, Rose decided: more, he was just… more. The Doctor's presence filled the space. Or maybe space was moving to accommodate him–Rose wouldn't have been surprised. _Thank you, Jack, for sending him to me_ , she thought; then he was next to her, smiling down at her, and thinking got kind of hard because it wasn't just his normal beautiful smile, it was a controlled low burn whose heat was directed fully at her. Rose reflexively licked her lips, and the Doctor's smoulder flamed.

“It doesn't matter whose fantasy started it, Rose," the Doctor said, "it's something we both have wanted to happen for a while now."

"It is?" Rose breathed.

Rose had on the same vintage Hollywood starlet pink satin lounging pyjamas she had worn into the kitchen. He hadn't let himself look at her then. This time he did. His eyes did a slow circuit down Rose Tyler's body and back up. The full-length trousers were wide but not shapeless, teasing him with the silhouette of well-toned legs and a glimpse of her naked feet, cherry-coloured toenails and a silver toe ring. The soft man-tailored jacket crisscrossed over her heart and cinched around her small waist with a wide matching belt that let the supple satin drape over her breasts and around her hips, showing her body off in a way that was definitely not man-tailored.

His eyes drank in the creamy pale skin of Rose’s face, her long delicate throat and the swath of upper torso that for his (newly expressible) taste was too narrow and disappeared too soon beneath wide lapels that covered but didn’t hide the plumping arcs of firm, full breasts. Lucky lapels, he thought, should be his hands instead. Dropping his eyes, the Doctor could see down into the criss-crossed front of Rose’s jacket, see the lace trim on her little cotton sleep bra. Normally he would have pulled his eyes away immediately; now he made no effort to hide his interest, openly enjoying the view. His palms itched. His gaze lingered on the expanse of Rose's breasts visible above the barely-there triangles of cotton, growing dark and rapt. Rose's breath hitched and her fair skin deepened almost to the colour of her pyjamas. She self-consciously brought her hands up to hold the lapels together. He looked up, not even trying to cool the fire in his passion-blown pupils. Rose looked at him and lowered her hands, letting the lapels slip wider apart. Jack had told him to look at what he had. For once the Doctor listened to someone other than himself, and he looked; and he saw Rose; he saw that Rose wanted him, maybe as much as he wanted her.

Habits die hard. The Doctor had a flash of guilt and started to look away. But he was so tired of all that _I'm a Time Lord, the last Time Lord, I should…_ crap! He was tired of beating himself up because there were no other Time Lords left to do it to him themselves. So instead, he watched Rose's physiological responses to him with an open mix of wonder, humility, and pride, then with another slow smouldering smile, vowing to do everything he could to throw her equilibrium off even more. Rose's heartbeat quickened and her breaths became deep and throaty. As he looked into her eyes, her pupils exploded, dark as his, and luminous. Desire flushed her throat deeper pink, flowed into the hollows above her collarbone, the triangle of naked perfect skin between the jacket's lapels, continued down, out of his sight. He wondered how far down her body the flush extended. He thought about following it with his mouth. Instinctively he licked his lips. Rose licked her lips again, and he was at least as gone as she.

The Doctor pulled Rose to him, cradling the back of her head in one of his hands, her bum in the other. He kissed her–fiercely, deeply, and with every need and hope and fear that had hounded him since he'd forced himself to let her go after her mad courageous swing saved him from a cowardly descent into terminal self-pity and liquid plastic. Rose responded just as fiercely, raking her fingernails through his hair and down his neck, rubbing his shoulders and arms, his back… working her hands up inside his jumper, skin against skin now, silky human warmth sliding over his cool chest, not tenderly, with need growing, human heat–Rose's heat–against his warming skin, rising heat, spiralling hot-blooded impulse until with a low moan that echoed in Rose, he pulled back and grabbed her wrists. Grabbed her wrists and pulled her hands away. His eyes pressed closed as he brought his breathing and other things under control.

"Rose, I need to tell you first." He swallowed. Rose nodded. Silent. Eyes enormous. Doe eyes, deer in a headlight eyes, ready to run but unable to do anything but stay and stare at him.

"It was beyond your control, Rose. Even though the pieces of the _fantaisie_ came from you, it was the Dreaming Stars that created it. They put us on the moor like that, to do what we did. You didn't coerce or seduce me; the Dreamers compelled you… they compelled _us_. You didn't cause it. You couldn't stop the Dreamers from raiding your mind for your private thoughts and making it happen. Nothing, Rose–nothing of it was your fault."

He kissed the top of Rose's head chastely–he kept it chaste. The kiss was brief, but he didn't move his lips away. "It wasn't my fault," he whispered into the beloved sanctuary of Rose Tyler's fragrant silky hair, "I couldn't keep the Time War from happening, I couldn't stop it, and I couldn't fix it. I have to live with that inadequacy–but I'm not a god, Romana! I'm just me, and I did everything I could." He kissed Rose again, top of her head, tender but long, a man almost drowned holding on to his rock.

Rose didn't know if the Doctor had meant her to hear, or if he'd just needed himself to say it. She kept still and silent though her heart cried for him. She would remember exactly what he had said and wait, hoping for some opening, some kind of guidance from him to let her help him heal.

The Doctor gave Rose another kiss, a quick peck actually, very Doctory, very normal. "You didn't understand what really was happening to you–you couldn't. But I know that if I had given you any indication that you were hurting or degrading me–even though you might not have been able to stop it, even though you didn't understand–your clever mind would have found a way to change the _fantaisie_. I _know_ this, Rose Tyler. I know you. I am _that sure of you_.

"You didn't hurt me. But Rose, tell me honestly...?" He waited for Rose to nod then swallowed and asked her anxiously, “Did I hurt you?" Rose shook her head, and he couldn't help but let out a deep sigh of relief, a sigh of infinite gratitude. His hands stroked Rose's arms from her shoulders to her wrists. He took her hands and held them tenderly in his.

"I’m sorry that I let the Dreamers take the initiative from me. Please forgive me for my cowardice." He kissed the backs of Rose's hands, her palms, and placed them over his hearts. "I can’t stop thinking about it,” he averred softly. "About us. I’ve wanted it for so long, Rose. I've wanted you in every way."

"Really?"

"Really. I’m still not completely sure of me, and I can't fathom why you’ve always been, but I'm ready to be sure about us… if you want it, Rose Tyler.” He cradled the back of Rose's head again as he leaned over her, and his lips whispered a light kiss to hers. “Rose, say the words you said that night, the ones that you know the Dreamers gave you. Do you remember? ”

Rose nodded. “I almost knew them then, Doctor, I mean… I _knew_ they were right even though I didn't know exactly what they meant and… but…it wasn't English.”

"No. It’s my native language, it’s Gallifreyan.”

“I don't know Gallifreyan,” Rose said, as if that explained it all.

“Neither do the Dreamers, Rose." He kissed her again. "I do."

As the implication hit her, Rose's wide eyes searched his for confirmation. He smiled. “I've wanted to hear you say them; I've dreamed it, Rose Tyler. On the moor, the Dreaming Stars took that dream… that desire…from me, and gave you the words.”

“What does it mean, Doctor?”

He sighed. “It's still painful to hear my language, but sometimes I just and you are _so_ and I don't know how else to tell you, Rose, it's just–"

Silencing the Doctor with fingers firm but loving against his lips, Rose said the strange, difficult words best as she could remember, hoping it was close enough. She started to ask him. His eyes had gone even brighter than usual. Rose thought he was trying to keep from crying, but she wasn’t sure if that was a bad thing or a good thing. Taking a chance, she wrapped her arms around his neck and said it again. He corrected one of the most difficult words, and she repeated it confidently.

The Doctor kissed Rose hard again, kept kissing her, wanting to lose control of himself, to lose his control in her. From the way Rose was responding, he was certain she wanted him to. She wanted him the same way!

“I hear from someone who should know that twenty-first century Earth women like it kind of rough. How?”

“Doctor... ”

"Restrained, maybe? But not gagged." He smiled. "Not my Rose.”

"Y..your Rose?"

"Aren’t you. And aren't I your Doctor."

They weren't questions. They were the acknowledgment of something both the Time Lord and the human woman should have realized from the moment the Doctor had taken Rose Tyler's hand in the basement of a London department store. Rose raised her hand to the Doctor’s face, caressed it.

"Always," she smiled, stepping back to let him enter, and closed her door.

"So: restrained, immobilized," the Doctor purred. "Unable to move anything but your mouth." He grinned his goofy Doctor grin, breaking the spell he’d cast.

"Oi!"

"Yup. Exactly." The Doctor’s grin eased into his natural smile. "Held down, pressed against a wall or something like that? Weight on you, a body pressing against yours. You like it that way?"

"Yeah sometimes, I guess."

"Mm-hmmm."

"It’s just, sometimes it’s a turn-on, y'know."

"Yes. I know." His voice was a weapon that the Doctor wielded with a Time Lord's genius and a man's desire. It was deliberate and sumptuously compelling. It was basalt magma interflowing with honey, thick and black and golden, rich and inescapable. Shivers cascaded down Rose's body, shaking those beautiful breasts; her lips parted again, and something insatiable looked out at him through eyes no longer amber or innocent. He had done that to Rose Tyler… he! His pride grew into smug assurance. "Pressed against a wall or something," he said with a dark look and enigmatic smile.

"Yes, that can be a turn-on if it’s the right–”

Before Rose could finish, the Doctor had her slammed up against the wall, her arms pulled taut above her head, her wrists pinned by one of his large hands. His free hand moved to cup Rose's face, and his thumb teased her lips. "What else do twenty-first century Earth women like?"

"I guess …they like…umm…" Rose had to concentrate to retain her train of thought. How could the grip of his one hand be so demanding and powerful, Rose thought, and the other touch her so gently? The Doctor was strong enough to snap her neck with barely a movement, and so tender her heart cried.

"What do YOU like, Rose Tyler?" the Doctor asked.

His soft Northern drawl caressed each syllable of Rose's name. Rolling them around his tongue slowly, he tasted them before letting them slip through his lips. Then his mouth, his lips and tongue caressed the woman to whom they belonged. He nibbled Rose's earlobe, her neck, whispered, low and dangerous, against her ear. “What do you want?”

Rose looked into eyes the colour of midnight–indigo almost black. Infinitely deep. Clear and starlit. She shivered again but held the Doctor's gaze. “You.”

“You got me,” the Doctor said huskily. “Have had since _run_. And you always will, love.”

Lifting Rose by her wrists, the Doctor insinuated a knee between her thighs. Rose found she could just reach the floor by slipping sideways over his knee, stretching her leg, and pointing her toes. With a dark smile and a shake of his head, the Doctor pulled Rose back up then lifted her higher, denying her even that tentative contact with the floor. Pinning her against the wall by her wrists, he ghosted his knuckles over Rose's cheek, her jaw, down her throat, into the hollows above her collarbones. Rose whispered his name and the Gallifreyan words she'd learnt. He stared into Rose's eyes as his hand slipped between the soft silk lapels, found something softer, silkier, Rose's skin. He scraped his fingernails along the lace edging of her cotton sleep bra then slipped lower. Splaying his fingers, his large hand covered both her breasts, and he teased her nipples lightly with his thumb and little finger. Rose moaned and he did it again but not so gently; raked the edge of his nails across, sharper, harder. He captured one firm nub between two fingers, pinching and twisting. Rose stared at him, and the hunger that burned in her dark eyes burned honest and real and willfully for him. She kept her eyes focused on his. He knew she wanted him to see and know that this passion was undeniably from her and only because of him.

He scraped his nails across Rose's nipples. Pinched again. And harder. Rose did a little kind of squirming wiggle against his knee; he pressed up firmly into the apex of her thighs and she rubbed down against him with a low visceral hum. He played her nipples and her center like a fine instrument, with different degrees of pressure, different mix of pleasure and not-quite-pain, played her body and delighted in the melody of her desire.

Dipping his head, he wrapped his teeth around a firm nipple, finding it easily through the layers of satin and cotton. He rolled the bud between his teeth, pulling and sucking as if he would take it off her breast if he could.

"Oh my god! Oh Doctor!” Rose gasped and moaned.

The Doctor chuckled and nipped her other nipple the same way. He opened her belt, slid her jacket and bra up her arms, and used them to bind her wrists together. _Are you sure?_ he wanted to ask. “Stay,” he whispered hoarsely instead.

Then his mouth was wet and hot around Rose's bare nipple. She screamed once in surprise then began to moan. He raked his teeth along her nipple, rolled it, nipped it, flicked his tongue over the tip, not letting up, not letting go–Rose’s body was his to move as he led it! He was hard getting harder, and he let himself revel in it. Drawing her areola into his mouth, he increased the suction. He suckled her as if he couldn’t stop until he drank his fill of her… as if all that could sate his hunger and fill the hole between his hearts and in his soul was Rose's primal heat and spiraling desire, and her unending wellspring of love.

Rose’s body juddered against him and she began to whimper. Her hot breath against the nape of his neck tantalized the nerve endings in his skin. He shuddered against her and her body writhed in answer. His knee pressed harder between her thighs, into her soft yielding flesh, forcing the damp satin between her folds. Rose rocked against his thigh mewing softly. Feeling the bump of her clitoris, he pushed his knee into it, rubbing wet satin and stiff denim over the swollen bundle of nerves. The inarticulate sounds Rose made resonated with hunger and egged him on.

He crushed Rose against the wall with the full length of his body. The wiry muscles of his chest and stomach and thighs defined themselves against her soft yielding body as he moved, and he ground his hardness into her with an almost ruthless delight. His hearts beat against Rose's breasts, but nowhere near as fast as hers.

Popping the button that closed Rose's satin trousers, he slid his hand inside and cupped her mound. The trousers slipped down her legs, and she was naked. His fingers teased her. Jack had told him to see, told him that this was what twenty-first century Earth women wanted–it was what Rose had wanted, wasn't it? He flashed back to that night on the moor, the night that wasn't, and he felt…wrong.

"Rose," he rasped, unable not to ask, "is this–?"

"Yes," she moaned. "Are you my Doctor?"

"Yes," he whispered and ground his lips into hers.

Restrained, bound by her own clothing, hanging and not able to feel the floor, Rose was powerless to do anything but cry and moan, sob the name of the man she wanted with all her soul, and beg him over and over to take her. His finger teased her, sliding easily through the slick evidence of her desire, but not giving her what she needed from him. Rose sobbed in frustration. His tongue invaded her mouth and silenced her. His legs between hers forced Rose's legs wide apart, and he thrust two fingers into her heat, grinding his knuckles against her swollen clit. He slid them out, rubbing over a spot that made her just a little bit crazy, shoved them back in, hitting the same spot, forcing them deep enough and hard enough to lift Rose's body higher, drew them out and slammed in again.

The hard fast rhythm of the Doctor’s driving fingers didn't let up, his kisses didn't let Rose think–barely let her breathe, and her body was shuddering and she somehow got her mouth free of his, screamed out his name… his name… and begged him to stop.

"Doctor….No! Doctor NO…wait!"

The Doctor stopped immediately, though it wasn’t easy. Rassilon, had he hurt Rose? This was a stupid idea, taking Rose like this, no matter what she said she wanted. It was stupid and wrong to tell her he wanted her, to want her… no, never…never… stupid to want her, just wrong just _wrong_. He surely wouldn’t fault Rose if she’d gotten some of her sanity back at last. Bringing his heart rate under control, he carefully slid his fingers out of Rose's center, lowered her to the floor, and untied her wrists. His laboured breaths as well as Rose’s were rasping and loud in his ears. He had to support her; Rose probably supported him somewhat as well.

Rose trembled violently, overcome with the prelude of erupting violence in her center and the physical effort it took to stop it. "Doctor,” she panted.

As his eyes met hers, Rose saw his worry, his fear. She also saw so much love within them that it sent her mind spinning. His broken voice brought it back.

"Rose? Did I… are you… "

"No–no!" she shouted at him breathlessly. "I'm fine, Doctor, just…." She cupped the Doctor's cheek with one trembling hand, fisted the other into his jumper insistently. "Doctor, I need to be touching you and tasting you. I need to wrap my legs around your bum. I need to feel you inside me and let my hands be crazy on your body, and show you how much I... Most of all right now, I need to make love with you." She slid her hand inside the Doctor's jumper and caressed him, found his nipple plump and firm and scraped her nail across it lightly; then she covered one of his hearts with her hand. "Please, Doctor, let's make love."

Rose took the Doctor's hand and led him to her bed. Her mouth flittered over his face, dropping light kisses across his nose and cheeks, his mouth, his chin, down into the hollow of his throat. With hands still trembling she pulled his jumper up his arms and over his head. She kissed his collarbone, tasted his skin in the hollows above. Her lips traveled his chest and arms, his stomach. She moved around him, letting her fingers and lips and tongue roam freely over his back. Her tongue played in the little patch of soft hair on his chest and then teased his nipples until they were hard and heated and he had to grip her shoulders to keep his body from swaying. Rose kissed the Doctor's stomach, his hipbones, dropped light kisses over the narrow trail of hair from his navel to the waistband of his denims. She undid his button and zipper, pulled the denims down his sculpted legs. Kneeling in front of him, Rose wrapped her hands around the Doctor's tightly muscled bum and pulled him toward her. She played her tongue along the join of his legs and torso, and sucked at the hollows of his pelvis. She felt the Doctor shudder, and smiled. Moving back up to his navel, she started down the trail of short hair again, nibbling with her teeth and lips, all the way down this time, finishing her journey with a flourish of her tongue around his penis. The noises her Doctor made were the most beautiful Rose had ever heard, and he said her name in a way she'd never heard but wanted…oh so wanted…to hear every night and day for the rest of her life. She stood, took the Doctor's hand again, and took him into her bed.

They lay on their sides on Rose's bed, facing each other, slowly learning each other's bodies with their hands, their fingertips, their lips. The Doctor liked when she scratched her nails across his scalp, nibbled his left side over his third and fourth ribs, and sucked in the hollow above his pelvis. He made strangled but pleasured noises when she circled her tongue on the head of his penis and played her nails along the base of his scrotum. He tended to ask if she was sure, but she could shut him up by nibbling on an earlobe or flicking her tongue over his nipple or in the hollow above his left hip. He loved her. He told her he loved her.

Rose liked when he brushed his thumb over her lips, when his fingertips whispered down her throat, down, all the way down, when he teased them over her bum, and slid through the folds of her labia to circle her clit. She made the most wonderful noises he'd ever heard when he sucked her nipples. She was a perfect height for him lying down… as much as she was standing up. She tended to bite, but he didn't mind–no, he didn't mind at all. The touch of his fingers made her wet. His voice made her wet. His smile made her wet. She loved him. She told him she loved him.

The Doctor rolled onto his back, taking Rose with him. They lay like that–heart to hearts. His fingertips whispered lovingly. She covered his chest and throat in languorous kisses full of tongue and nibbles and silent promise. The Doctor kissed the top of Rose's head, wrapped his hands around her pelvis and lifted her onto him. Holding tightly to his forearms, Rose adjusted her angle and took all of his hard length into her center. They moved unhurriedly, delighting in each other's bodies and learning more ways to please each other.

They made love. 

 

 

 

* * *

Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters and settings are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.  
  
This story archived at <http://www.whofic.com/viewstory.php?sid=52981>


	2. "Being and Time"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"You once asked me if the universe would implode if I danced, Remember?" He chuckled, a sound Rose was quickly and happily getting used to. "If I had sashayed right instead of left right then, it just well might have."_

 

 

 

 

Rose watched the Doctor cross the room.  He was very handsome and very beautiful and a little terrifying and not human.  As his lean body flowed like a soft snowfall across a subtly moving glacier, Rose thought she could see the air shift around him.  Again she had the feeling she was watching space open to let him pass.  But there was more. The few seconds it took him to travel from her sitting room to the bed seemed to stretch between them like taffy. _Space doesn't want to impede him_ , she thought, _and time refuses to let him go_ The Doctor had told her he was different than humans, and from Jack she'd learned that he was powerful in ways she couldn’t really understand; but now she knew it with her senses, not just her brain.  He called himself a lord of Time, and she knew he had some kind of connection to it—he was always talking about time lines and what was right or needed fixing or had to stay the way it was—but she hadn't understood that Time could love him as she did, and maybe even as much. She saw Time shiver as he touched it, saw it open for him willingly and caress his long gorgeous body.  Time loved the Doctor.

When he came to her bed, he just stood looking down at her silently and soberly, and it seemed to Rose as if the Time Lord could be watching the sun expand again, or surveying the birth of a galaxy. The room seemed to breathe with him, a shimmering flux of light and density, and Rose wouldn’t have been surprised if it were the whole of creation come to caress him.  Then he dropped down on the bed next to her, offered her a glass of water, a tender kiss, and a big goofy grin. 

"What is it, Rose?" the Doctor asked nervously, not really sure if he wanted to hear Rose's answer. She was looking at him as if he were one of the particularly strange creatures they'd come upon on their travels. 

"What was that?" Rose asked breathlessly, a little tentative, a little gobsmacked, a little awed.  "Can you tell me? How did you do that?"

"Ah." The Doctor swore to himself in Gallifreyan.  When he'd taken Rose to the station to see the Earth die, she had been so freaked out by the total _alienness_ of the aliens, he'd been terrified she'd feel the same way about him.  Since then, he was always careful not to let anything show. He knew he'd have to tell her more some day; but like this—without prelude and right after they'd first made love—was not the way he'd wanted Rose to learn.

“Just me making an entrance with your glass of water."  As he handed Rose Tyler the glass, the Doctor straightened to his full height, his demeanor all business, his voice controlled and full into lecture mode, his enormous intellect at the ready… totally on the defensive. "Water, Rose Tyler, is always underappreciated.  It is powerful medicine, it is; full of electrolytes and minerals and cell-nourishing molecular stuff, and I wanted to give it its proper recognition." He grinned at Rose again.  "You think that was something, you should see what I can do with a banana milkshake." 

The Doctor was grinning at her like a happy fool, but Rose could tell he was uneasy.  He hadn’t realized what he had been doing! What else did he do, but carefully not in front of her... not in front of humans?  Rose looked at the Doctor closely. He was beautiful and scary and goofy and wonderful, this alien—same as when she'd met him, same as when she'd followed him into his TARDIS.  She knew the Doctor's masks well enough now to know that he was nervous and a little scared…She scared him?  From what Jack had said, the Doctor might be the most powerful and important being who ever lived, and _she_ scared _him_!  She’d have to think about that.

"Oh, you think you’re so impressive," Rose said on an impulse.

“I _AM_ so impressive,” the Doctor shot back.  He took Rose in his arms. “But nowhere near as impressive as you, love." He kissed the top of Rose's head.  "Rose Tyler, it’s time you know what I am.”

“I know what you are,” Rose said pulling him down to cover her. “You're my alien.”  She kissed the Doctor, opening her lips to his, and he responded eagerly. His kiss was fiery yet tender. Power and gentleness again, her Doctor.

“You need to know more, Rose, and I should have told you before we…we…"

"Shagged our brains out?" Rose finished with a grin.

"I was going to say made love, Rose Tyler."  He smiled, an easy honest smile.  "But that too."

He rolled them onto their sides. His leg slid over her as casually as if he had been doing it all his life, and he pulled her against him. Rose Tyler was wrapped up in him, her head against his chest, between his hearts. Her breath tickled. He liked it.  

"I'd told you that worlds were destroyed in the Time War, including my home, Gallifrey. For reasons that don't exist any more—" he sighed heavily but didn't stop "—because Gallifrey no longer exists, the Daleks wanted Gallifrey.  They wanted it more than they cared about the consequences of what they would do in space and time in order to get it, certainly more than they cared about the species and cultures they would destroy, and those that their actions would keep from becoming.   Nothing was off-limits for the Daleks, no act too heinous not to commit.   They obliterated and overwrote realities with the ease it takes to swat a fly, and with even less consideration.   Questions of ethics—"   He sighed again.   "There weren't enough questions of ethics," he said sadly, almost to himself.

"Gallifrey was beautiful, Rose.   My people… the Time Lords of Gallifrey, that is… were impressive and brilliant, more brilliant than any other species we knew.   We were powerful in many ways, not just because we had TARDISes that could travel through time. Your people use expressions like  _What could possibly go wrong?_ or  _How can that be possible_? or _I see where this is going_. Time Lords could see all the possibilities in the universe stretched out before and behind us through time like shimmering ribbons of promises vying for fulfillment; and all that had passed before and had become and had been were the factualities that had borne them, supporting them and giving them purpose, grounding them in the story of the cosmos. And the Time Lords took delight in watching them become and watching them be." 

"Got that off the dust cover of a book, did you?"

The Doctor chuckled and kissed Rose's nose.  "In a less poetic manner of speaking, Time Lords could sense unrealized realities.  Unrealized realities are possible realities that never do become part of reality.   They are what your science fiction writers call alternate time lines, and they fan out from a nexus in the so-called prime time line as projections of possible spatio-temporal events.  A hiccup at a nexus of possible events can set an alternate time line as the prime and that actualized possibility becomes what everyone experiences as reality, along with the prime effects it brings, and so on.

"We Time Lords saw all those alternate time lines, every possible reality—well, most of them, because there are an infinite number—and to us they are all on par ontologically, they are all possible, they are all pregnant with reality.   Although what _happens IN_ one possible reality could be monumentally fantastic— like saving a cheeky blonde in a store's sub-basement; or it could be monumentally…  or… or a… horrendous cataclysm."   Rose squeezed his hand and he gave her a weak smile.   "The difference in the time lines from our perspective is that at a nexus one of the possible realities is realized rather than others.

Rose nibbled the tip of her thumb a moment.   "Realized reality.   That's the entelechies that are produced when a possible event becomes the actual, real event."

"Entelechies!"

"Yeah."   She grinned.   "I got that from Jack.   Did he get that from you?"

"No, he got that from Aristotle, who got it from me."   The Doctor grinned and Rose slapped his shoulder.   "Oi! Your Captain Jack would probably say that an entelechy is a possibility that got a cosmic kick in the pants."   Rose said nothing, but her eyes shone at him a bit brighter, as if all the laughter her mouth denied had moved into them.   "That's crude, but it is a good way of describing it.   Think of it, Rose: to be able to see past, present, and future; all that has been; all that is, everywhere; and all that could ever be.   Oh, Rose, I've watched the Universe in all her fantastic possibilities!   I've seen your little ape species grow—and I know the marvel you become!

"This is the… tableau, the symphony, the dance of potent possibilities that the Time Lords understand.   But even more, if we wanted we could suggest one possible reality into actuality rather than another.  You once asked me if the universe would implode if I danced, remember?"   He chuckled, a sound Rose was quickly and happily getting used to. "If I had sashayed right instead of left right then, it just well might have.

"But not even a god can know with certainty that one particular set of possible realities is better than any other—not in an absolute meaning of _better_ that makes any practical or, more importantly, ethical sense.   _Which entelechy is the best to nudge?_  — How do you answer that in any way more than just as a hypothetical question to ponder?   Even with ethical and practical foreknowledge, the use of such power could cause damage just as easily as good in the universe.   Vain as Time Lords were, Rose, we didn't pretend to know how a god would go about deciding; our philosophers and scientists believed it was prudent for Time as well as for all that existed throughout time and space, that Time Lords only ever observe matters of the universe, and never go mucking about in them."

"Oh, they must have loved you!" 

Rose's fingers stroked lightly across the Doctor's back, glided over a firm bicep and down the inside of his forearm, up his long torso from his hip to his lean shoulder.   They played with his collarbones, tickled him through the closely trimmed hair at the base of his skull and the sensitive area she had discovered along the back of his ear.   They worked their way down his back again. When they came to rest on his bum, Rose decided it was a very good place to park them.   He yelped when she squeezed.

"Sorry, Doctor, I got sidetracked by the possibility presented by your beautiful reality pressing against mine."   She grinned.

The Doctor ducked his head almost faster than Rose could follow, his mouth tightened around that siren tip of tongue that peeked out at him, and he sucked it into his mouth.   He discovered quickly that it wasn't enough; what started as an answer to Rose Tyler's tease turned into a long, possessive kiss. 

"Go on," Rose said when she could finally speak again.   "You were telling me that you are a very powerful being from a planet of very powerful beings; you fought the Daleks; and everything that will ever exist was always at stake, because what was saved this morning could be destroyed last night."

The Doctor pulled up and gaped at her.

"I may be only nineteen… well, I guess twenty, almost twenty-one, but I read science fiction, and I’ve travelled with a mysterious alien in his space ship that also travels in time."  

Rose's fingernail teased over the Doctor's bum, into the furrow where it joined his thigh, and then around toward the warmth at the inside of his thigh.   "Rose Tyler," he choked, "if you get where you’re going, I’ll never be able to tell you what I am and apologize."

Rose stopped, rolled up and faced the Doctor soberly. "Tell me, but don't apologize."

"The Dalek you met had mutated after contact with your genetic material.   Pure Daleks were efficient, soulless, unremorseful killers.   I’ve spent most of my life fighting them.   They keep coming back."   He sighed then shook himself.   "Sorry. It's just… They hated me, you see.  Rose, I would always defeat them…and they always came back."

Rose clasped one of the Doctor's hands, squeezed it, and didn't let it go.

"Of course they hated you, Doctor, and they were afraid of you.   You’ve always been their future.   You've always been what defeated them and ended the Time War.   You believe you are responsible for all of it because you couldn’t avert the war and keep all the people from dying—or not becoming alive, I guess.   You feel guilty and you hate yourself, maybe even more now because you’d hoped you’d find a way to undo it but you haven’t been able to yet; and you hate yourself for that too.   And you hate yourself because you’re not dead. I know a bit about not being able to stop something and feeling responsible for it happening, hating yourself for letting it start when you really didn't see it coming and hating yourself for not seeing it coming, wondering how much of what you did was wrong and wondering at what point it all went out of your control, and thinking that was your fault too."

Rose bit her lip and looked down at their clasped hands.

"Maybe I know more about it now than I did a few days ago," she said.  "I hate what the Dreamers did, I feel as if I was violated—"

"Oh, my Rose…"

"No! Doctor, let me finish!  I feel… "   Rose felt her face flush, but she didn't let it stop her.   "Now that I understand what happened, I can start to deal with it.   Doctor, I'm… I'm grateful that it happened, in a way.   I understand my feelings better now, I understand me better.   I know that just because I feel a certain way about something, that doesn't make it so.   I'm not a god, so I shouldn't take a god's hubris on myself for all that goes right or all that goes wrong."

" _Hubris?_ " 

"So, I like Greek mythology and I listen to Jack."   Rose smiled, sliding her hand down the Doctor's arm again, and wrapped her fingers through his.

"It's hard to let go of the belief that what went wrong was your fault and you'll never be good enough because you weren’t good enough when you needed to be.  Even when it's not in your conscious mind, it can sneak up on you.  I'm going to show you how wrong you are, Doctor.   And I'm gonna make you see how important you are to everyone that's alive now and will be alive."   She kissed him.   "Time loves you, Doctor. Maybe you didn't choose to be her champion, and maybe you didn't want it; but Time wanted you.   Time picked you."

"You sound like Jack."

"Jack is wise beyond his years," she said.   She exhaled thoughtfully then looked at the Time Lord, searching his laughing eyes with intense scrutiny.   "You're so stubborn not t'learn things about yourself that you don't feel like knowing, I figure teaching ya's gonna be my job for my whole life."   She laid a tender kiss on his lips, and then one not so tender.

"I don't deserve you, Rose Tyler."

"Don't you dare say that!"

"But it's true!   You're smart and quick and clever and beautiful and impressive and... and the best!   Rose Tyler, you are the best and I don't deserve you."

"I'm the best?"  Rose asked seriously.

The Doctor nodded. 

Rose smiled shyly.   Then she grinned.   "Then you totally deserve me."

The Doctor shook his head.   Rose pulled him down to her and kissed him. Rolling her on top of him, the Doctor kissed Rose's lips, her jaw, her throat. Burrowing his head into the join of her throat and neck, he filled his senses with her, inhaled her, tasted her, pressed his lips to her warm smooth skin.   He sighed.

“What about Jack?”

 

 

 


	3. "The Reluctant Knight's Colours"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _"Howdya like that Jack Harkness!_ You _helped save a mythological being!" Jack laughed heartily, and for once he didn't cough up blood. Things were looking up._
> 
> * * *

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

After the Doctor had left the kitchen to find Rose, it took Jack Harkness longer than he would ever admit to, to get his legs back. When he did, he told them to take him back to his room. Although he was pretty sure he’d have gotten there fine even if the TARDIS hadn’t moved his room down a short hall from the kitchen, he thanked her most sincerely; she usually knew more than her three passengers put together. With a groan, Jack let his body collapse onto the firm comfortable bed, giving in to the hedonistic pleasure of the finest cotton sheets and covers, and a feather bed and pillows filled with the down of a little animal that three times a year happily molted its plumage into the equally happy hands of master tradespeople. A glass of water stood on the table less than an arm's distance away, next to a short stack of books and a reading lamp that gave excellent illumination and reminded him of home and his family. A little further over were the water pitcher, a bottle of liquor, an empty glass, and a bowl of fruit. His gentleman's gun was on the table as well, a habit he had been loathe to break, but out of deference to the TARDIS and her crew, it was just about a good arm's length away, nearer the wall, behind a bowl of fresh fruit, obscured by a bunch of bananas that looked like a severed hand with long bony fingers just beginning to go fleshy and plump.

"Thank you, darlin' for this coddling, too."

The TARDIS let Jack know he was very welcome, and he settled into luxury he'd known only when the game called for it. Eternal optimist that he sometimes was, Jack hoped he’d have a long wait while the Doctor and Rose settled their differences with each other and then took advantage of those differences in the best ways there were. The TARDIS would let him know when to make himself less scarce.

With a smile, Jack pictured Rose Tyler in that crk’mont griggin mane and purple paint, fairly glowing in the cool blue light of the sonic screwdriver, confident and in control of the situation, radiant. Courageous and clever and beautiful was Rose Marion Tyler, daughter of Earth, gypsy traveller through the space-time continuum! They joked, the three of them; but it was a dead serious fact that the Doctor and he could count on Rose to know when they needed saving, figure out how, and make it look like a run to Tesco's. Jack knew, better than the Doctor, how many ways Rose had saved the Time Lord already, and not just from the messes he gleefully got himself into. He would be in deeper shit than he could handle if Rose ever left him, more trouble than Jack would ever want to face down.

“He’d better let her save him this way, too, right?”

The TARDIS didn’t reply; she never told tales, not even to Jack Harkness. Mostly not.

Tatty black leather and bleached blonde hair... Just looking at the Doctor and Rose, no one would take them for the heroes he knew them to be. Unlikely pair of heroes that they were, even more unlikely - they’d saved a stupid dumbass con man, first from destroying the Earth, then from a spectacular but somewhat inebriated finale, and then from running con after con on the outside while he danced himself around a two-year-sized hole inside his head.

Then why leave? The Doctor had asked him to stay–well, as much as the Doctor would ever openly ask anyone other than Rose to stay. Jack loved the TARDIS and would stay for the joy of working on her. Even if the Doctor and Rose got together–and he hoped with a heart that he hadn’t thought could still exist inside him that they were working on that now– Jack knew he’d be welcome.

How did he know? It was in the Doctor's eyes, much as anything normally readable could be in eyes as alien as those. But it was. And the way the Time Lord smiled at him when he did something that made the TARDIS _purr_. They jabbed at each other, but the Doctor knew Jack respected him and he respected Jack right back. As for what happened before...

"Damned foolish, arrogant know-it-all son– "

No. He really had already forgiven the Doctor for being himself in just that way, and maybe he'd even gotten the Time Lord to forgive himself–all right, probably not completely but at least for as long as a creature addicted to self-loathing could go without.

"Howdya like that Jack Harkness! _You_ helped save a mythological being!" Jack laughed heartily, and for once he didn't cough up blood. Things were looking up. "As for Rose…" Who could ever not want to be around Rose Tyler? Certainly no one could stay upset with her for any length of time.

_So sure about that, eh?_ something niggled at Jack Harkness's certitude.

"Yeah; I'm totally sure." No hesitation there.

_No._

"Ok! Fine." Jack sighed, in no mood to argue with himself. "Whatever." He pulled himself up heavily and took a long drink of water then refilled the glass. "Rose apologized. I said _done and forgotten_. And I let it go."

_And you let it go._

Sure he let it go.

He set the pitcher and glass back on the table, maybe a little too loudly. Maybe he plumped up the pillows with a bit too much force and dropped back down a little more noisily than usual. Maybe he might still be a _tad_ upset, but only about things in general. He wasn't upset with Rose. Well not too much. They'd both said… "Rose and I said–"

_It's easy to say words, isn't it? If anyone should know that, Harkness, it'd be you; words are always easy._

"No." Words weren't always easy. What he and Rose had had to say to each other wasn't easy to say. And parts of it were damned hard to have to hear, like the parts Rose didn't know she had missed saying. More damned holes a man could fall into.

Jack rolled up, throwing his legs over the side of the bed, and poured himself a drink from the bottle.

She'd been through a lot, Rose had; and while it was not so much more than others had been through, really, it seemed to Jack that she pulled life lessons out of her experiences differently than other twenty-first century women he'd known. But Rose was _Rose_ ; that was part of what made her strong. Maybe that was how she had been able to make the Doctor stronger, and now that she knew more and understood the Doctor more... Maybe he did help those two after all, if they were off somewhere doing what he hoped they were doing, or even if they would only begin to look and listen for what each of them was offering. It was a shame he couldn’t stay to see… and hey, who’d ever figure that Jack Harkness could help a Time Lord! After that miracle, maybe he could parlay his karma into finding what happened to his memory, and his family. Then maybe he'd be able to figure out what colour his soul had become.

_So now you think you still got one of those?_

"I didn't…. it's not…" Jack sighed. "Maybe. I don't know, really."

_You were sure you didn't, Harkness, when you almost turned yourself into a one-man Guy Fawkes celebration._

Jack smiled and repeated himself. "Things are looking up."

_So why leave?_

"C'mon, Harkness, let’s hear one good reason you have to leave _NOW_."

Who said that–the TARDIS or he? Didn’t matter, he’d answer them both. “Breakfast.”

Jack inhaled slowly through his nose, letting the multiple-choice sweet-and-savory answer caress his thoughts in a swirl of sensory memory. Every morning, unless they were captive somewhere: the kitchen table set with tea and coffee, eggs, toast, and a universe of possibilities. The enticing smell of possibilities, something to do worth doing, worth living to do, and coffee.

The TARDIS made good coffee, sure; but his was better.

And three times out of four, he'd made the eggs.

And the potato pancakes.

_That’s the reason?_

He slammed the glass down. "Yes, _damn me!_ That's the reason."

. . .

"I _said YES_!"

. . .

Jack scoffed into the silence. "You won't buy it, eh?" He inhaled, a deep, slow, closed-eyed, double-checking, end-of-discussion, _finis_ -stamping breath. "Ok, how about this: Because it's time." He chuckled, sort of. "Maybe I can track down a missing piece."

_Don't you listen to yourself! It just sounded as if you really might have found one already._

"Sure, yeah-yeah, of course! " Jack snorted, "I found it in the coffee grounds."

_Hmmm._

No, that wasn't what he’d meant. Whatsamatter, couldn't the TARDIS translate sarcasm? Someone laughed. Sarcastically. Jack took another drink and called it the TARDIS. _The trouble with being so perceptive, Harkness_ , he told himself, _is that you always can tell when you’re trying to con yourself._

_Maybe you’re conning yourself into going?_

"Maybe."

_So it’s really time to go?_

Jack looked around his room, inventorying his possessions, most all of which he had acquired since he'd joined the Doctor and Rose. Not anticipating a quick exit, he had left his great coat, army air force cap, and blaster in a wardrobe. Cocking his head, he looked for his gentleman's gun; found it where he kept it, beyond the water pitcher, the bottle, the lamp that always made him think of his mother; more than an arm's stretch away, hidden behind the fruit bowl, under the cheap-old-horror-movie-prop-looking bunch of. ... _Bananas are good_ ... "It's time to go."

"You’re running, Harkness."

"Yes."

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

Disclaimer: All publicly recognizable characters and settings are the property of their respective owners. The original characters and plot are the property of the author. No money is being made from this work. No copyright infringement is intended.  
  
This story archived at <http://www.whofic.com/viewstory.php?sid=52981>


	4. "Out the Airlock"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Jack could read the monitors well enough to understand the dangerous non-existence the Doctor had blundered them into. "Fix it!" he yelled as he raced to the doors. "Get oxygen and resuscitation equipment, and have the TARDIS ready medbay!"_
> 
> * * *

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Doctor had been gone long enough for Jack to get his legs back and get back to his room; grab a drink, a catnap, another shower, another drink, and put himself as right as he could without sneaking into the medbay and maybe getting himself spotted by the Doctor, who didn't need to know he didn't know his own strength, or Rose, who had better things to do than mother him again. He read a bit, considered taking another drink but didn't, then went back to the control room, slid into a space under the time rotor console that had become more home to him than anywhere else he'd known since he'd lost the Boeshane, and did some tinkering for what might be the last time.

"You were a while, Doc." Jack smiled when the Doctor eventually loped into the control room. "Long enough to–"

"Jack, I said what I thought she wanted to hear; she said 'Doctor, no'."

"But why didn't …"

"Jack, just drop it, please," the Doctor said as Rose entered with a large duffel, dropped it next to the jump seat and sat down, sliding back, feet off the floor, legs crossed.

Rose Tyler kept her thoughts and comments to herself, just watched the last Time Lord and the renegade Time Agent dance around the console of the last sentient time machine, pushing buttons, pulling levers and a couple of sad excuses for, nudging controls to tweak read-outs. Rose smiled. Each push and pull and nudge she watched them make was a loving caress.

No one could ever be as lucky as she. She'd been given all of space and time and the affection of two true heroes. No matter how her life ended–and she hoped it would be in her Doctor's arms–she would never be anything but grateful.

She had made more than her share of mistakes in this trio, and she'd almost destroyed the two most important people in her life.

The Doctor hadn't told her what had made him open up to her. He didn't have to; she knew it was Jack…just as she knew that Jack had helped the Doctor face what the Time War had done to him. If there would be any true healing in the Doctor's future, any peace for his soul, it wouldn't be because of her but because of Jack.

Jack had helped her too, though Rose was sure he didn't realize it. Talking to him, feeling his empathy and concern, she'd been able to look at herself objectively. The book of Rose Tyler wasn't so bad; it was a story of a girl learning to grow up. Some of the chapters were exciting, some dangerous but that was ok, and the love scenes were more than she could have dreamed. If it had a happy ending, Jack Harkness should be credited as editor.

Rose knew Jack still hurt from what she'd done, even if he'd said _done and forgotten_. She could see it in the way he didn't quite look at her, and it damn near broke her heart. She'd broken Jack's faith in her ability to believe in him. She had to get it back–she had to!

”We’re here, Rose: London, the estate. ” The Doctor threw Rose a quick look. “Same spot, then?”

Rose nodded.

"Rosie–"

"No, Jack. Don't say anything, just… Good luck, Jack."

"Jack," the Doctor said gruffly, "I'm not taking the TARDIS to the London blitz; I don't fancy a time paradox with Chula nanogenes."

"Beijing, August 22, 2008 works for me, Doc" Harkness grinned. "I've got a date with the Olympic gold medal women's soccer team."

"Right." The Doctor swallowed hard. "Are you ready, Rose?"

"Yeah." Rose slid off the jump seat, picked up her duffel, and walked to the door slowly. She turned to look at her two men. Jack shifted uneasily from foot to foot, looking so young and unsure. The Doctor stared at her with a deep frown. She nodded and he hastily threw a couple of levers.

"This is it, Rose Tyler."

Rose opened the doors and stepped out of the TARDIS without a word.

"Damn!" The Time Lord exploded. "The TARDIS took us to Oz, not London!" The Doctor stared at the Gallifreyan script on one of the monitors in horror. "Rose!" he yelled, attacking controls on the console. "Don't go any further --- It's not London out there!"

But it was too late. Halfway out the door, Rose's body was sucked into a null point in real space.

Jack could read the monitors well enough to understand the dangerous non-existence the Doctor had blundered them into. "Fix it!" he yelled as he raced to the doors. "Get oxygen and resuscitation equipment, and have the TARDIS ready medbay!" He had one shot, because he'd be blind out there. Blind, without oxygen, and quickly immobilized. In the second it took him to get down to the doors, Harkness extrapolated from Rose's position when she was sucked out to where she had to be relative to the TARDIS and calculated the angle he needed; then with a prayer that geometry and physics worked the same wherever they were, even when they were nowhere, Jack took a deep breath and threw himself out the open doors.

Rose Tyler hovered in grey void–but even that was illusion supplied by her brain's befuddled visual cortex. There was no light, but no darkness; no colour, no substance; no sense of place because it wasn't a place; no sense of time because time flowed around it, or maybe in spite of it, but certainly not through it. (Technically it was not an _it_ in the same way it didn't have a _there_ ) And there was no air. Rose felt a wave of vertigo then another, much stronger, closed her eyes and grit her jaw shut. Then she felt something like a prod through a stack of down comforters. When the vertigo got worse, she knew she must be moving.

Jack felt himself bump up against a mass that had better be Rose Tyler. He gave her body a push, imparting the acceleration needed to get her home. He couldn't see or hear, but he knew with the assurance of a trained operative that he'd sent her right. The Doctor would be waiting at the door to catch her. Jack momentarily regretted not letting Rose hug him earlier, but he had far more important regrets to wrap his mind around… didn't he? Instinct and training told him that he'd rotated fifty degrees as he used his remaining physical momentum to head Rose home, but he was able to tease a last bit into a kick to turn him thataway, where he reckoned TARDIS-filled space should be.

As his body finally stalled (at least that was how he imagined the state of non-movement), Jack used up a little subjective time to consider how to get moving back to the time ship– physically impossible of course, a final mental exercise, because mental was all that remained for him to control. He pictured her sitting there, blue and beautiful, waiting patiently for him to return.

Jack relaxed, at ease with himself and content…all in all, life had given him more good than bad. He felt his mind going fuzzy and himself suffocating. Then he felt heavy, which was impossible because mass was indefinable in Oz. He kicked out with what seemed to be legs, and he tripped over something that had no right being anything in the nowhere of Oz. Strong arms caught him and a voice commanded him to breathe. He automatically followed instructions and tasted air that shouldn't exist. He opened eyes that shouldn't be able to see, and looked into the Doctor's unearthly blue eyes.

"I've got you, Jack Harkness," the Doctor said.

Jack's eyes and ears sent the message to his brain that something was going on it might want to make sense of. He was no longer in Oz, the Time Lord had a grip on his shoulders, and they were standing on–

"Gravity threshold. We're in an environment vestibule!" Jack choked, knowing he had to be right… and if he was he was going to kill the smug stupid alien.

"Yup."

"Could you have thrown up the vestibule as soon as you saw where we were?"

"There is a toggle switch on the control panel and one on the inside wall next to the door. Of course, the TARDIS would do it if I just asked her to." The Doctor smiled. "Probably would do so for you as well, Jack; she likes you a lot. We'll work that out later."

“You could have saved Rose, then."

“Didn't say that."

The Doctor started to help Harkness out of the TARDIS's bubble of generated gravity and air, but the Captain was having none of that. He pulled out of the Doctor's grip and staggered into the ship. When the Doctor got there, Harkness was leaning against the strut closest to the doors, waiting for him.

"You crazy bastard!" Jack panted. "What if something had gone wrong?"

“You were here, Jack,” Rose said from the jump seat. “I wasn't worried.”

Jack spun so fast he'd have fallen over the strut if the crazy bastard hadn't caught him. “You were in on it too, Rose?”

“Yup.” Rose grinned her peek-a-boo tongue grin that until that moment had always melted Harkness's heart. "Jack, I–"

"You little idiot!" Jack yelled, so angry… so furious, so… so… terrified in aftershock he spit. Rose pressed herself into the back of the seat in fright as he pulled out of the Doctor's grasp and took a step toward her.

"Oh Rosie, what a fucking dangerous stupid game!"

But he immediately turned back to the Time Lord, angrily getting into his face. "You wanted me to go out after her! Did you take us into Oz on purpose?"

"We needed to show you something, Harkness,” the Doctor said. “A good man doesn't stop himself just because he can. Whether he has the time to sit and think it through, or his brain has to let his gut decide it for him, a good man still decides not to stop. Remember that, Jack Harkness; it’s important.”

Jack was spun around. Rose Tyler's arms were tight around his neck as she pulled herself onto her toes. She looked him eye to eye. "Remember that, Jack Harkness." Rose cupped his cheek. “It’s important.”

"You little idiot," Harkness repeated, coldly. He pulled her arms off him, let her drop onto her feet, and glared at her fiercely. His body was reeling with shakes that were beyond his control; he didn't care to analyze them, just control them. Rosie's wide-eyed distress didn't help. He turned his back on her. "And you," he threw at the Doctor, "you know better than that!"

"Rose," the Doctor said, "go make us all some tea. Jack and I will be in in a bit."

"But I..what i-if.. " Rose stuttered anxiously. "I mean, it's the kitchen–"

"The kitchen is just a kitchen now, Rose. The star sapphires can't ever hurt you again, I promise. I tweaked the TARDIS's sensors and redefined her parameters for organic change, consciousness, mental activity, and acts of will; and I built in a buffer to default to those parameters for any ambiguous preconscious, and black-box-organic read. The TARDIS will extrapolate to the superior mode in all instances of electrochemical and biochemical activity that is functionally equivalent to a neo-conscious state."

Rose stared at the Time Lord.

"He means he told the TARDIS to poke anything that comes in and ask it if it thinks it's thinking," Jack said. "If the TARDIS sees a cause in something an organism does, she will treat it the same as if it's done intentionally — as if it has a purpose in doing what it's doing, even if it's being closed-mouthed. Even if it doesn't have a mouth…

"Which is something he should have had her been doing all along," Jack mumbled, and not at all nicely.

To his credit, the Doctor looked shamefaced. "Rose, Jack is right. I'm really sorry the Dreamers weren't ID'd before they got through the door. The problem was that the scan pattern of their reflexive activity is similar to that of a simple organism responding automatically to a stimulus, like light or heat."

"Doctor, the Dreamers attacked and raped our minds! Jack said they took our ideas and sensory data, and something he says are _intentionals_ , and pushed us into acting out. They made us do things we'd dream about but never dream of doing, and we believed we were responsible. They took away our choice. That's thought control, like the Nestene Consciousness was doing. And the TARDIS thought it was just a bloody tropism?"

The mighty Time Lord turned bright red. "Rose, it's been fixed, I swear! It's ok to go and make tea."

"Lucky for us there's no such thing as triffids," Rose huffed as she turned her back on him.

Jack Harkness leaned over to the Doctor and mumbled, "Don't tell her."

"No way," the Doctor whispered as Rose, still grumbling angrily to herself, left to make tea no one wanted so that her two blokes could have the privacy to settle things or knock each other's blocks off. "Our Rose can handle a lot of things, but I fear if she ever–"

"I've seen you do a lot of stupid things, Doctor," Jack broke in, "but nothing… _nothing_ was as stupid and self-centered and unthinking as this. You could have gotten Rose killed!”

“No.”

“You so sure about that that you’d risk her for a stupid stunt?”

“Not a stunt; I knew what I was doing, and I knew the TARDIS would save her if you or I couldn't. It proved what I wanted to. Didn't it, Jack.”

That it was a statement, not a question, wasn’t lost on Harkness; but he was in no mood for a grammar lesson. He gave the Time Lord a thoroughly disgusted look and turned away. With strength Captain Harkness couldn't best, the Time Lord turned him back.

“Rose and I have more faith in you than you do, Jack Harkness,” the Doctor said. "We're gonna have to do something to change that." He shrugged. "May take a while; you're dense, Harkness, even for a fifty-first century human."

" _I'm_ dense?" If fear and relief, anger, incredulity, and wary suspicion could occupy a face at the same time, that was the look that Jack gave the Doctor. “You do realize, you just threw Rose Tyler out of an airlock to get me to stay?”

"Ah. Guess I did," the Doctor said a little sheepishly. Then he grinned.

The Doctor didn't see it coming. All he knew was he was suddenly on his bum on the floor of the control room, his jaw hurting as if he'd been sucker-punched by a cyber. He figured Jack must know what happened because one of the lad's fists was cut and swelling, and cradled in his other hand.

“You crazy alien!” Jack glared down at the Doctor.

“It worked didn’t it?” the Doctor asked. "Jack?"

As the Time Lord gazed up at him, Jack saw something in the Doctor’s eyes that was anxious and hopeful. This man, perhaps the most powerful being in the universe, was waiting on his answer as if it really meant something! With a small noncommittal shake of his head, Jack Harkness turned and walked out of the control room.

The Doctor picked himself up and followed Harkness to his rooms. He caught the door as Harkness tried to slam it in his face, stared him down, and followed him in.

"Did it work, Jack?"

Jack turned quickly to face him, taking an angry step forward, and the Doctor stepped back reflexively. But the captain just looked at him, distress so strong on his face that it walloped the Doctor worse than Jack's punch had.

"Why, Doctor? Just… why?"

The Time Lord sighed. Instead of answering Jack's question, he changed the subject.

Or maybe he answered Captain Harkness after all.

"I've always made a point of not looking at the time lines. Since time is in flux, I believed it isn't my place to make up its mind for it. I always let it choose for itself. The TARDIS takes me wherever-whenever we get, and I make sure never to look anywhen I'm going to turn up. But things that feel wrong and need fixing… or unfixing… that's a different thing altogether." He scratched at the back of his neck.

"Time Lords didn't differentiate any of it, not until the War of course, but by then what was wrong couldn't be fixed. Thing is, now it feels like just a game plan on my part–maybe it's my last pretence of being a Time Lord." He shrugged. "Maybe it's me just trying to be one of them, rightly," he said quietly, "just once before I have to admit there aren't any Time Lords in existence anymore. I don't know. Jack, I don't know anything anymore, not like I thought."

"Doctor, what–"

"When you want, I'll troll the time lines. I'll look for your missing years. Give me permission, Jack, and I'll find out what happened. If you need to go back, I'll take you back to your… I'll take you back. If you want to stay here on the TARDIS… I'd like you to stay."

"Why?"

"To keep me from doing stupid stuff, keep me from messing up what I think I can have with Rose now, because of your help. Keep the TARDIS working smoothly… She likes you Jack, a lot, and that means…" He sighed and shook his head. "I like you, Jack. I really want you to stay."

"A bit," Jack said.

The Doctor thought a moment. "How about you hang around t'pick up the pieces when Rose leaves?"

"Rose isn't leaving, Doctor."

"Everyone leaves. You know that."

"Yeah. But Rose plans to stay with you forever. Even if you go stupid git again and try to drive her away, Rose will stay with you until the end."

"That doesn't change my offer, Jack." The Doctor looked at Harkness and saw something behind the young man's eyes he recognized too well. Jack was leaving for his own reasons. Good reasons, solid reasons, as far as Jack was concerned. Reasons the Time Lord wouldn't even try to refute with logic. "And then there's the matter of breakfast."

" _What_?"

"No one makes scrambled eggs like you, Harkness. I've gotten used to coming in mornings to the smell of scrambled eggs and coffee. I'd hate to give it up. And that coffee! I love Rose Tyler, will 'til I die; but not enough to drink her coffee."

"You don't drink coffee, Doctor."

"You do, Jack. Do you want to drink Rose's coffee?"

"Doc, really; you have to let it go."

"I let so much go, Jack Harkness, good and bad." The Doctor rubbed the back of a hand across his eyes then shook his head hard, shaking out ghosts and demons, memories and things that humans should never have to learn about. "I let so many go," he said plaintively.

"And yet you just let Rose–"

"Jumping into Oz was Rose's idea. Please don't ever let on that I told you. She believes in you, Jack. She told me she was going to show you what you needed to see. She said it was a leap of faith."

As the Doctor shrugged, he didn't notice Harkness's reaction. Maybe. He didn't comment on it if he did.

"Fine, Jack. To each, and all that. U.S. Women's Soccer Team–got it; whenever you are ready to go. I'll tell Rose that I'm making breakfast from now on." He smiled ruefully. "I am ready to make a leap of faith on Rose and me, but not on her eggs and pancakes."

Harkness nodded slowly, unsmiling. "What about the coffee? Doctor, you know we can't ever let Rose Tyler make coffee."

The Doctor gave a long grim shake of his head. "Fate of the universe an' all that, Jack Harkness."

"Yeah."

"Yeah."

 

 

 

~o0o~

 

 

* * *

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	5. The Doctor's Backstory

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This contains my original Chapter 4* from Part 2 of DARK RETROSPECT-- the "Chapter Notes" that followed Ch. 4, "Coward, Any Day" in the original livejournal version. It includes excerpts of dialog and stage directions from both Classic DW and the new series that illustrate how the writers perceived the character of the mad alien we so love, the Time Lord who would end the Time War. Evident throughout is a reasonably consistent backstory (as consistent as the Doctor ever could be), which provides the logic Jack Harkness applies to figure the Doctor's part in the Time War.
> 
> Please take the short time to read this. It contains one of the seminal speeches in _Doctor Who_. I'd appreciate comments - though please do not post anything like _Go f* yourself_

Dark Retrospect -- Part II, Chapter 4*:  Chapter Notes 

 

 

**NOTES TO CHAPTER 4**

 

SECTION I. 

 _Wherein I set out interesting bits from some_ Doctor Who _Shooting Scripts that elucidate the Doctor's code of ethics._

[Note: The Doctor's words to Jack at the beginning of his breakdown in Chapter 4 are from "Dalek": “I couldn’t— I wasn’t… And now they’re all dead."]

 

  **GENESIS OF THE DALEKS (1975, Part 6) writer: Terry Nation**

_[The planet Skaro.  The Time Lords have shanghaied the (fourth) Doctor and his companions, dumped them, defenceless, on Skaro in the past, and told him to destroy the infants that Davros has created and engineered to become the Daleks; or they will abandon him, Sarah Jane, and Harry on Skaro to suffer their fate by Davros.  The Doctor and Sarah Jane are outside the nursery in which Davros is incubating the nascent Dalek race, the charge is set, and the Doctor is about to touch two wires together to set off the explosion. He hesitates.]_

 

 **DOCTOR** :  

But the final responsibility is mine, and  mine alone. Listen: if

someone who  knew the future pointed out a child to  you,

and told you that that child would  grow up totally evil, to

be a ruthless  dictator who would destroy millions  of lives,

could you then kill that child? 

 

 **SARAH JANE SMITH** :  

We're talking about the Daleks. The  most evil creatures

ever invented. You  must destroy them. You must complete 

your mission for the Time Lords. 

 

**DOCTOR:**

Do I have the right? Simply touch  one wire against the

other and  that's it.  The Daleks cease to  exist.  Hundreds 

of millions of  people, thousands of  generations can live

without  fear, in peace, and never  even know the word "Dalek". 

**SARAH JANE SMITH:**  

Then why wait? If it was a disease  or some sort of 

bacteria you were  destroying, you wouldn't hesitate. 

 

 **DOCTOR:**   

But if I kill. Wipe out a whole  intelligent life form, then I

become  like them. I'd be no better than  the Daleks.

 

_{The Doctor does not put the wires together to blow up the nursery. Daleks arrive, the Doctor drops the live wires and they run off.  A Dalek rolls over the two wires, blowing up the nursery and destroying the Daleks.]_

  **1x 01   ROSE, writer:  Russell T. Davies**

_[The Doctor and Rose are in the underground chamber facing the Nestene Consciousness]_

 

**ROSE:**

Tip in your anti-plastic and let's go.

**DOCTOR:**

I'm not here to kill it. I've got to give it  a chance.

 

 

 

 

 

 ... 

 

(The Autons grab him. One of them takes the anti-plastic out of his jacket pocket)

 

  **DOCTOR:**  

That was just insurance! I wasn't going to USE it. 

 

 

** 1x 06   DALEK,  writer:  Robert Shearman**

_[The Doctor has just discovered that one Dalek survived the Time War. The Dalek shoots (to exterminate) the trapped and terrified Doctor point-blank, but its weapon doesn't discharge. During the ensuing exchange, the Doctor gets progressively irrational. Finally, the Doctor tortures the Dalek.]_

 

 (The Doctor stops looking terrified and his face breaks into a huge grin.)

 

**DOCTOR:**

It's not working!  

(The Dalek's eyepiece looks down at its gun.  The Doctor laughs maniacally.)

**DOCTOR:**  

Fantastic!  

(He lunges at the Dalek)  

...

 

 **DOCTOR** :  

Your race is dead! You all burnt, all of you! 

Ten million ships on fire – the entire Dalek  race wiped

out in one second.... I watched  it happen.  

I MADE it happen!

 

 **DALEK:**  

 You destroyed us?

 

(The Doctor's expression changes.  He walks away, his back turned on the Dalek.)  

**DOCTOR:**

 (quietly) 

I had no choice

…

 

 **DALEK:**   

And what of the Time Lords?

 

 **DOCTOR** : 

Dead. They burnt with you. The end of 

the last great Time War. Everyone lost.

 

 **DALEK:**   

And the coward survived

...  

 

I am alone in the Universe.

 

 **DOCTOR** : 

(Smiles) 

Yep.

 

 **DALEK:**   

So are you.

 

(The Doctor's smile fades.)

 

 **DALEK:**   

We are the same.

 

(The Doctor spins around.) 

 **DOCTOR:**  

(furious)

We're not the same, I'm not—

 (stops) 

No- wait. Maybe we are.  You're  right, yeah, okay.

You've got a point.   'Cos I know what to do. I know

what  should happen.  I know what you  deserve.

(raises eyebrows)

 Exterminate. 

(He pulls a lever on the control panel and the Dalek is immediately engulfed by electricity. It starts screaming again.)

**DALEK:**  

Have pity!

 

 **DOCTOR:**  

Why should I? You never did.  

 (He turns up the voltage.)

**…**

 

   _[At the end of the episode, the Doctor confronts the Dalek with a BFG.  Standing between the two of them, Rose asks the Doctor: what are you becoming?  He drops the weapon.]_

 

 **DOCTOR:**   

The Daleks destroyed my home 

my people.  I've got nothing left.

 

 **ROSE:**  

What about you, Doctor?  What  the

 hell are you changing into?

 

 **DOCTOR:**   

I couldn’t… I wasn't… oh, 

Rose. They're all dead.

 

 **DALEK:**   

Why do we survive?

 

 **DOCTOR** : 

I don't know.

 

 

** 1X13  THE PARTING OF  THE WAYS, writer: Russell T. Davies**

[ _Unable to escape the Daleks, the Doctor is dead with no hope of regeneration —that is a given, he_ KNOWS _this. He also knows that whatever happens, he won't be around in some regenerated body to save any creature, any system, from the Daleks, or to put right any mayhem the Daleks will wreak in the cosmos.  He can end the Time War then and there, with the use of the delta wave, destroying the Daleks and saving innumerable lives and civilizations across the galaxies. But the delta wave will kill every creature in its path, just as surely as if the Daleks attacked and exterminated them. What is at stake is the future of all those galaxies outside the delta wave's deadly path:  not just the freedom but the very life of every being in those galaxies and of all their descendants—which is rather like saying (as they were wont to do in old science fiction stories) the fate of the universe is in the Doctor's hands._  

_Depending on how you look at it, in making the final choice to use the delta wave and then actually going through with the act, the Doctor will (a). let the end justify the means; (b). opt for the"greater good"; or (c). become like a Dalek]_

 

 **EMPEROR DALEK:**  

The Delta Wave must kill every living thing in its path…

 

 **JACK:**  

The range of this transmitter covers the entire Earth

 

 **DOCTOR:**  

There are colonies out there.  The Human Race  would 

survive in some shape or form, but you're  the only Daleks

in existence.  The whole universe  is in danger if I let you

live. … do you see, Jack?   That's the decision I've got to

make for every living thing.  Die as a Human or live as a Dalek.

  **…**

 

 **DOCTOR** :  

You really wanna think about this.  'Cos if I

activate the signal, every  living creature dies…

 

 **EMPEROR DALEK:**   

Then prove yourself, Doctor.  What

are you – coward or killer?

 

 **DOCTOR:**   

Coward.  Any day.

 

 **EMPEROR DALEK:**   

Mankind will be harvested  because of your weakness.

 

  

  **3x05 EVOLUTION OF THE DALEKS,  writer: Helen Raynor**

_[This could be the result of his having wiped out at least two species and having no more stomach for it.  Or not.]_

 

 **DOCTOR:**   

Right now you're facing the only man the 

universe who might show you some 

compassion. 'Cause I've just seen  one

genocide. I won't cause another.

 

 

** 4x13 JOURNEY'S END, writer: Russell T. Davies **

_[Is large-scale destruction and death for the greater good – to avoid further suffering—ever an option?  Even if it stops the ultimate and ineluctable extermination and/or enslavery of every sentient being alive?  What constitutes murder, and is it ever justifiable? Is suicide?]_

 

 **SUPREME DALEK:**   

We will become the only life-forms in existence!

…

 

 **MARTHA** : 

The Osterhagen Key is to be used if the

suffering  of the Human Race is so great, so without

hope… that this becomes the final option.

 

 **DOCTOR** : 

That's never an option

….

 

 **NEW DOCTOR**   

He's right. Because with or without a  Reality 

Bomb, this Dalek Empire's big  enough to

 slaughter the cosmos.  

(Donna is uneasy, but the Doctor seems to reach a decision) 

They've got to be stopped!

 

  **DOCTOR:**

(horrified) 

What have you done?

 

  **NEW DOCTOR:**  

Fulfilling a prophesy

….

 

 **DOCTOR** : 

(Urgently) 

Davros? Come with me. 

(Holds out his hand) 

I promise I can save you! 

 

 

_For the Doctor, even the Daleks' assured and certain slaughter of the cosmos – i.e. the destruction of ALL there is – is not reason enough to destroy them; to do so is to commit murder and genocide, which is never morally justifiable.  Even the person who has created the Daleks to murder and enslave (and will again and again)  is worth saving. This is the decision the good person, the moral, ethical, person, must come to: coward, any day._

_~~_

I won't quote _ad nauseum_ ; the Doctor's ethical position is written clearly albeit sloppily throughout NewWho.

Maybe the writer of ep 1 x 06 ("Dalek") wasn't simply taking the grieving, about to be exterminated Doctor over the edge into madness and hyperbole;  _maybe_ he hadn't received RTD's memo that the Doctor had not really been the one to destroy Gallifrey... the memo received by, you know, the writer of ep 1 x 13, the episode that gave us Nine's (and DW's) defining code of ethics:  "Coward. Any Day." Oh, wait,  ** _that_**  writer  _was_  RTD.

 

 

 

 

 

 

  **~~~~~~~**

**~~~~~~~**

 

 SECTION II. 

_Wherein I rant, but reasonably_

 

     _This above all: to thine own characters be true_

 

RTD gave us a post-Time War Doctor who is a mad, broken, grieving, lonely and Tragic Hero (caps intentional), and began a run of New Who inconsistencies that is painful for a fan of classic DW, (even with its cheap effects and often "liberated" plots) to endure .

In 'Dalek', the Doctor suddenly finds  (in possibly the most terrifying way he can) that the enemy that killed his people still lives and that it is a certainty it is going to exterminate him. The Dalek shoots its gun off in the petrified Doctor's face; but the gun is broken and does not fire.

Arguably the Doctor has never been what humans would call sane or stable, but this Doctor, mad from the Time War, goes over the edge. He tortures the powerless Dalek physically and with taunts that he destroyed the Daleks in the Time War.  (Can we blame him?  Well, Rose would and does, and so would he.)

Later, after he almost loses Rose to the Dalek-- the responsibility for which is his (and perhaps this drives him sane?)--the Doctor has another chance to kill the Dalek.  Rose stops him -- of course -- by making him remember who he was…who he  _IS._

In TPotW we see the sane Doctor, the ethical alien that Terry Nation, Douglas Adams, etal gave us.  In the tradition of Literature of Revolt and cowboy movies, RTD gives us an Existential hero whose defining statement is:  "Coward. Any day." The tenth Doctor continues both the Doctor's unbending embrace of morality and his total denial that the end justifies the means. (No Vulcan slogans, no Utilitarianism as justification) In this vein, and in the ultimate insult to the fans, RTD even expects us to accept the bilge of Ten dumping the "New Doctor" (RTD's phrase for Handy) because he committed genocide when  **Reality**  was at stake.  (I guess causing just your average, basic genocide, which Rose/Bad Wolf did, doesn't count – or maybe the Doctor was too afraid of the wolf to punish Rose. Maybe that's why he dumped her along with the new Doctor?  Nah.) 

If the need to save the universe (GotD, PotW) and Reality (JE) won't turn the Doctor to genocide, why did the Time War?  Alternately, if it was the Time War that made him this New Who, why not act when Reality is at stake **again?** (If he doesn't, isn't his first act of reality-saving rendered meaningless?) 

And  **always** : where does Four's speech fit in the DW universe?  Why had no Time Lords looked at any time lines?  Why didn't RTD explain why no Time Lord had known enough about the future to stop the Daleks ... or even just exactly how things work in the Whoverse, where time is not static, not linear, and not a series of consecutive moments moving inexorably and unalterably in one direction.    If it will happen it has happened and is happening. No  _bad_  paradox there, just a consequence of the writer's guidelines. It's a matter of whether the writers are consistent with the consequences.  True, they can't make the old shows go away, or wipe viewers' memories of them, but I am a bit peeved that they just amputated, closed off, destroyed, or whatever, 40 years of DW history (for one season of Time Lord intermittent angst)… and I'd bet Terry Nation and Douglas Adams would be too.

(An aside, from a writer's pov: given that until now, Tom Baker's mad, grinning Doctor was considered THE Doctor, why hire an actor known for the subtlety of his acting and the ability to say as much with expression as others can with dialog? What is CE's expression saying through season 1?  Mad.  Grinning. And nuanced.)

And it goes on: the Doctor abhors the idea of the Osterhagen key. He tries to save Davros.  In Raynor's EotD he refuses to kill the Daleks, saying he won't be responsible for another genocide .  I'm not going to dignify Davros' _your companions are your weapons_ drivel and the Doctor accepting it without comment (TSE/JE).  That's just a writer (RTD, actually, **_THE_** writer) going for dramatic effect rather than substance, and underestimating the viewer's ability to recognize it for what it is, and to… well… think .

RTD said in one of the dvd extras that his DW is unique because his writers treat moral questions.  That was the moment I realized the egos of the New Who head writer, writers, and producers were too big to fit into a Dalek outfit. Or  the TARDIS. No, the new DW is unique because RTD takes the fun alien Doctor who never was and needn't be consistent in his stories (except as a role model to children) and gives him a backstory that makes him a tragic broken hero who saved all of space and time but is almost destroyed first by what he had to do, and then by his subsequent remorse, loss, and unrelenting sense of morality—

\--when it suits the plot, the season, the writer, and the exec producer. If RTD and now SM can't give me continuity, then give me back the kids' show.    Please.

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
